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3D printing: ‘potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything’ — President Obama

February 13, 2013

(Credit: White House)

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. President Barack Obama noted that “Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.

“Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.

“There are things we can do, right now, to accelerate this trend. Last year, we created our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio. A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.

There’s no reason this can’t happen in other towns. So tonight, I’m announcing the launch of three more of these manufacturing hubs, where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defense and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs. And I ask this Congress to help create a network of fifteen of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America.”

Comments (47)

Many threads here but no technicolor dream coat. There is no one simple answer. Issues are many. The metaphor of the recent meteor remind us that all outcomes are not even available for bargaining. Ghosts of organized religions with big ideas are on the bargaining table of man. Still and all, it is a good guess that soon enough both money and work will be archaic. Survival and self actualization will be grounded in whole new ethos. (except for Ray, he will be in the ether unrelated to the ethos)

Brilliant, 3 more places where people can 3D print iPhone cases with their initials in them to counter this country being increasingly left behind in the ongoing industrial globalization.

How about something with teeth? Like an initiative to bring back real industry to this country and give those jobs to actual Americans who pay income taxes instead of turning a blind eye on companies who use modern slave labor right under our noses and abroad.

How about an initiative to fix out of control government spending on pointless initiatives such as this?

Or maybe an initiative to reunite an America which is more divided every day by class and political polarization because of the out of control government spending, curtailing of civil liberties, and lack of jobs.

Don’t knock outsourcing. Every transaction is voluntary. The reason jobs transfer overseas is because of the corresponding increase in profits returned. You call it modern slave labour, but the fact is, overseas wages are continually increasing as a result. We want *more* of this, not less. Rich countries ultimately want rich neighbours. If its jobs over efficiency you want, a famous economist once noted, take away their shovels and give them spoons.

We need an advanced Watson style simulator for economic modeling. The issues have become so polarized and there is little consensus as to what the effects of one policy may have and or is having. To me it’s really destressing how little respect is given to either side. Each has points of merit. What the long term effects would be from any policy choice. My prognosis is that these robotic systems will give the US a boost in the short term. That we would be smart to embrace them and ride the wave to what I feel is it’s logical conclusion. In the long run 3D printing will take jobs away. If we don’t try to be ahead of the curve, then 3D printing will go to foreign manufacturing. It behoves both the republicans and democrats to foster it’s develoement in the US. All of the support jobs for 3D printing will eventually be taken up by other robotics systems. To me those support jobs are like the Maytag repairman. There will be a reduced need for them. Especially as manufacturing reliability increases from AI assisted design.. Overall it’s a very complex issue. We need a respectful discussion of what is actually in our best interests. I’m not holding my breath. This forum is comprised of a higher than average intelligence consumer. There should be a higher level of civility. Instead it more resembles a school yard fight. Complete with baseless name calling and highly charged emotional states. I hope we can focus on the core issues and debate these points with reason.

……and there was Boehner with his poker face while Obama was excited about his reconstructiomn ideas. Refusing to stand as did a vast majority of the Republicans when “just a little extra” was mentioned to add to the minimum wage. So many other ideas that were totally good, …..and there was Boehner looking like he had an upset stomache from drinking too much-which he has a habit of doing. I’m and Independent. I like both parties. Yet, when real progress is mentioned for the good of the country
……… ‘and there was Boehner.”

DEMAND drives economic output, and WAGES drive demand…see the problem? Unfortunately, increasing the minimum wage does NOT result in greater consumer demand because…Wages are driven by EMPLOYMENT and when the minimum wage is increased, employers cut their workforce.

Sounds good in theory but it doesn’t always happen that way. The number of people that train to be lawyers has flooded the market, yet they charge more money. I went to four lawyers about a particular issue , they all wanted to charge me a retainer fee of two thousand dollars. I knew there was no case, but they assured me that I had a “strong case”. I went to yet another high powered lawyer that my well to do client refered me too. He took pity on me and told me that he would be stealing from me if he charged me five hundred dollars. That there was no case. Your laws of supply and demand are subverted all the time. I could go on and on about abuses by so called professionals. It’s much more of a rigged game than you realize.

You were actually affecting the demand curve by refusing to buy a service. There is the buyers reserve (the price you want) and the seller’s reserve (the price he wants). In your case the buyer’s reserve was below the seller’s reserve so there was no gain through trade. Even though legal fees are seemingly over the top, they may be less expensive than fees before the glut of lawyers. Bri, trusting a lawyer to do right by you is not necessarily a good idea. Lawyers are hungry for fees and use their guile to persuade people about topics that the layman is unfamiliar with. Speaking of lawyers, I think President Obama is giving people false hope with this new manufacturing picture. Manufacturing is increasingly automated and uses fewer people per unit of output. Manufacturing has been returing to the US not due to Pres. Obama’s policies but despite them. The price of natural gas is between 3 to 4 dollars per mmbtu in the US, 14 dollars in Europe, and 17 in Asia. This cheap energy is allowing for manufacturers to take advantage of cheaper inputs. Pres. Obama was very critical of the shale gas exploration that led to these prices.

@de Broglie: I appreciate your response and I don’t want to sound confrontational but I disagree with your assessment.. I told my friend of my legal advice and he asked if he could use ” my lawyer”. He did and the lawyer told him that his case had been settled. All relevant issues had been resolved and that ” he should tell his lawyer to finish up” my friend had spent eight thousand dollars already and his lawyer would have continued milking him for as long as he could. It’s fraud. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m not intimidated by legalese and have a good understanding of the general issues, neither of us woukd have been spared from the fleecing that almost ALL lawyers do. Shall we go on to the medical field. Without going into details my father was in the hospital recently. 100,000 thousand dollars later they couldn’t find the reason for my tather losing his strength in his legs. They proposed unblocking his corotid arteries to see if that would help. Finally our family practioner came back from vacation. We removed him from the hospital. We agreed that the most likely cause was the degeneration in his lower back. Sitting on the couch had caused undo pressure on the nerves cutting off the signals. Two years later he is fine. There is a high degree of fraudulent services in the highly trained professionals. This is by no means an isolated case. The issue is that they can get away with a fraud that normally would get jail time. 100,000 dollars for garbage. If the average Joe could charge money like that we wouldn’t need minimum wage. The average consumer can’t be knowledgable enough to guard against this fraud and they can’t inflate the wages that they earn for thier hard honest work. It wasn’t like that the lawyers were working hard, or the doctors. The system is rigged. It’s not governed by supply and demand. It’s governed by greed. Soon expert systems like Watson will undermine thier ability to foist this fraud on innocent people. I wouldn’t have had to waste my time talking to these charlatans. I’d ask my pocket Watson and I’d get a real honest answer. My fathers condition could be examined by nanobots and a Watson and 100,000 dollars of tax payees money( although I’m told that the hospital settles at about a third of the cost, so it was only 30,000 dollars of unnesssecary tests) wouldn’t be wasted with bloated diagnostics. Then you watch. Those sharks will be devalued and go out of business. The valuations of higher wage jobs is so inflated, it’s another aspect of the ” fundamentals of our economy that has been distorted into unsustainable positions that are very similar to the housing bubble. It’s hard to give enough details in the context of a post to really illustrate how artificial our economy is. Bottom line is there are winners and thier are losers, and the middle class and the poor are victims of predation from those with more power. Even relatively upstanding people are nothing more than con artists, that delude themselves into thinking they are doing the right thing. I look forward to illuminating this in greater detail as time goes by. 3D printing will imposed the individual to actually get quality goods for a reasonable price. It won’t creat high paying jobs. It will eliminate the price gauging fat cats that con people. I know quite a few. They tend to be my clients.

‘economic output’…. do you mean GDP, or something similar…
minimum wages are not driven by GDP… they are driven by protest, and marches of ordinary everyday wage earners, or unions…
GDP has risen a lot but no minimun wage increase to go with it!!
and if it was so and GDP went down so should the wages by your theory.
meanwhile the executive pay will go up again, and again and company profits might sore, with share holders getting a small return (executives are the majority share holders dont forget… so they get the bulk of the returns) and pleae dont start to BS me about how they have to be remunerated well to attract the best.. what a load.. they are just as prone to wrong decisions and failure just like the rest of us, exept the repercussions are felt by the wage earners more keenly.
and are there any honest executives left these days?
I wish america didnt glorify greed the way it does.
and fairly shared the profits of companies with the workers.
this would spur the economy more, more people with more money…
not just the top 2 or 5% or whatever it is that control 95% of your countries weath..
im sure they dont really deserve the stupendous amount of money they have accrued themselves.
just a thought.
but not much else…
prove to me with some statistics to back up your claim please….
allowing executives to set thier own pay agenda, whilst screwing down or sacking the actual workers, is the biggest problem america faces.
Its ‘mind over matter’…. the rich dont mind and the rest dont matter.
and 3D printing is not going fix unemployment, because 3D printers eliminate human workers in manufacturing.

Its hard to go through so many empty platitudes. But if you want some basic statistics: Look at the number of people wishing to immigrate to the US and other business friendly countries as opposed to those who wish to move to countries where your economic values are implemented.

For concrete examples take a look at the Economic Freedom Index and ask yourself which countries enjoy a greater lifestyle for all? And yes, Sweden does rank quite highly in terms of economic freedom, before you throw out that canard as well..z

Capitalism is not economic freedom. It is the private ownership of socialized production which relegates the majority to selling their labour, and a growing minority to relative impoverishment, a trend that will increase as technological progress is not matched by social progress.
Casualization and outsourcing may be efficient viewed purely through the lens of the self interest of an employer, but there is no accounting of the “collateral damage” of human beings caught in in this process.
But that’s just me, maybe the social and environmental devastation going on is just a figment of my socialist imagination.
The technological revolution has the potential to create a post-scarcity society but under the current corporate system will instead condemn many to unemployment and powerlessness, while concentrating power and profits in a plutocratic class. That’s the trend.

I fully support what our President said in his State of the Union speech and only ask those nay sayers to run for the Presidency is 2016 and let’s see what you have by way of grey matter. Get involved and assist in moving our Country forward or get out of the way because there’s work to be done. You may not like all that he is doing but, the economic data shows progress.

People can spend the time wasted on talking about football scores and, instead, address public policy issues affecting our cities, counties, states and country. Once people learn about the importance of public policy, they will find a way to “get involved”.

lol I am currently in my first quarter of college right out of high school and taking a macro economics class right now and just wow… you learn a lot about how things really work.

I keep thinking about whether or not this same type of economic system will continue to be used by AIs slightly before and after the singularity as the book “Accelerando ” seems to think… even though I still have 20% of the book left to read.

Ok, I have tried to post this TWICE and it has been blocked, but my other posts have not…interesting. Here goes again:

3D Printers are only HALF of the story. There is another technology that is transforming industry. MICRO-REACTORS are already transforming the Pharmaceutical and Petrochemical industries…and they could be used to create feedstock for printing.

The SYNERGY of these two technologies will give rise to an entirely new technology…a transport network similar to the internet to connect the printers to the reactors…the DIGITAL MATTER-NET.

Let’s get real. 3D printing is not going to be a significant contributor to jobs for the forseeable decade. Pres. Obama is one of the most economically illiterate presidents since Jimmy Carter. Surprisingly GW sounded more intelligent even though he couldn’t “talk good.”

It’s great to hear our president actually talk about something relevant to the scientific/technological community, specifically those of us that are interested in future trends…. but isn’t it kind of misleading? Bringing back jobs? I cannot wait for 3d printing to revolutionize the way we make things, but I don’t see how that revolution is going to include the kind of numbers of employees that say factory manufacturing employees… the whole point of 3d printing is cutting out some of those middle men.

Blair, 3-D printing will make a few new jobs here and there when the industrial models that use lasers to melt metal are cheap enough for machine shops to buy. There will be a market for parts that are out of production.

But when printers can print out copies of themselves, they will be cheap enough for every corner repair shop.

When you gain technology that can make products better than humans can, the humans will be pushed aside and will have to find other ways to make a living. 3-D printing will ultimately cause net job losses all over the planet.

Governments are going to have to re-think employment as a necessity for humans to sustain themselves.

@Rob B: Ray points out the tendency for linear thinking. The industrial revolution played out gradually over an extended period of time. It also was fundamentally different. The jobs created could only be performed by humans. Now the machines are becoming more capable than the humans. Even if we augment ourselves the laws of economics will make machines far more cost effective than humans. One of the main reasons for that is humans need time off and have dependence. A machine doesn’t need to raise a family so costs per hour will favor machines. The big question to ask yourself is what type of job humans would have an advantage for. Thinking of what happened before can be informative, but the bottom line is how things will be different this time around.

The fact that the industrial revolution played out gradually over an extended period of time is somewhat irrelevant. Society is much better equipped to adopt large scale reorganization now as opposed to then. No doubt machines will take over manufacturing jobs once held by assembly line workers, but that still doesnt imply increase in unemployment any more than gasoline powered tractors. If history is any example, the types of jobs that will become available have not been invented yet.

I highly doubt Obama is 8th. He has admitted to having trouble with high school algebra. Furthermore, it is almost incontrovertible that he got into his prestigious high school, Columbia (after Occidental), and Harvard due to affirmative action.